(Photograph by Lauren Lulu Taylor)

There’s a signal that exhibits cool individuals when a sure discourse or meme is not cool … that it has “jumped the shark”, if you’ll. That signal is when uncool individuals begin having opinions about mentioned discourse or meme. In fact, I’m a type of uncool individuals.

Which is why I now have opinions concerning the Drake-Kendrick Lamar rap battle. I actually, actually shouldn’t. As a middle-aged Asian girl, I’m in all probability the final particular person in both of those artist’s meant demographic. All the identical, right here I’m, with my crappy opinions. Which I’ll now unload onto you.

Opinion primary: I’ve by no means preferred Drake’s music. So there. Opinion quantity two: I’m so out of it that I assumed Kendrick Lamar already launched a Drake diss monitor, known as “King Kunta”. Apparently, it’s not a Drake diss monitor (however I really feel like I used to be misled, as a result of why are you speaking a few rapper with a ghost author, wtf occurred?) Opinion quantity three: Kendrick Lamar received. Now, clearly I’m not an skilled on rap beefs, and you’ll in all probability make an excellent case about how I’m utterly fallacious. However please, let me discuss up in right here in my very own area on this topic, similar to how I let white guys inform me about Thai meals over avenue meals tables at rice porridge retailers in Chinatown. That is my weblog, in any case. Go discuss what you want by yourself weblog.

I made a decision Kendrick Lamar received, not after watching a girl performing Indian classical dance to a monitor known as “BBL Drizzy”, or listening to a Japanese man rap over the identical monitor, however after studying a tweet on Twitter (by no means X) asking Kendrick Lamar to jot down a diss monitor concerning the tweet author’s personal ex, and offering helpful bullet factors, like “he by no means pays for meals” and “he by no means does his personal laundry”. That is humorous to me, imagining Kendrick Lamar sitting in a dusty outdated workplace in downtown LA, pen in hand, awaiting his subsequent fee. So I’d additionally wish to ask Kendrick to assist me (on this situation we’re on a first-name foundation, as a result of that is my weblog) (please don’t write a diss monitor about me, Mr. Lamar) diss one thing, however artfully. I’d wish to diss Chantaburi meals.

I’ve been to Chantaburi earlier than. And I didn’t actually prefer it. Every thing was too candy, however after I say it out loud, I remind myself of my most annoying relative. In Klaeng, we meet with actually beautiful individuals on restaurant grounds over which every desk is ensconced in its personal air-conditioned room. What’s there to not like? There’s even stir-fried boar, higher than what we get in Hua Hin, with loads of wild ginger and inexperienced peppercorns:

For dinner, we have now all of the seafood we are able to deal with, together with monumental native oysters with all of the trimmings; a hot-and-sweet soup of seabass; uncooked shrimp with seafood sauce; freshly fried pomfret with fish sauce; a creamy and disconcertingly candy chili dip of crab eggs; and a yum of three sorts of eggs, together with crab and catfish:

Mr. Lamar, I used to be too full to take pleasure in any of it. The substances have been top-notch and the cooking was rigorously thought-about, but it surely simply left me with a heavy feeling within the pit of my abdomen. My urge for food had absconded off with its secretary, not sure of whether or not it needed to return. Mr. Lamar, are you able to discover a technique to diss my urge for food?

The following day was little higher, despatched off to a restaurant that regarded prefer it belonged in a suburban Florida strip mall and inundated with elaborate reimaginings of “royal Thai” dishes like “cash luggage” and mieng kum with lotus petals:

Confronted with the prospect of getting extra of this meals for dinner, I simply couldn’t do it. In Sukhothai, I had subjected myself to a litany of noodle dishes, a lot of them cloyingly candy, and now I used to be dealing with the prospect of a thick massaman curry studded with durian and yet one more iteration of pork stewed with cowa leaves. Imagining the meal forward of me, I noticed my face within the mirror and caught a glimpse of what Drake could have regarded like whereas watching the response movies to “Not Like Us”. No extra, I say!

So I merely refused to go away. It was so simple as that. We stayed on the desk the place we had been nursing sturdy (however good) mojitos, watched the solar go down, waited for Lauren to take some footage, and stayed some extra. We ordered one other mojito. We watched the lights activate by the water. After which we ordered some dishes — quesadillas full of boiled rooster and cardamom shoots, garnished with an unholy heaping of bitter cream, and nachos topped with pork stewed with cowa leaves, avocado, and extra bitter cream.

And it was precisely what we (I) wanted, this nincompoop fusion of essentially the most touristic of Tex-Mex dishes and conventional native delicacies. The nachos weren’t even tortilla chips, they have been Doritos. The quesadillas got here with a recent tomato salsa that did completely nothing for the cardamom shoots and rooster. However right here I used to be, savoring each chew like Kdot saying “A minorrrrrrr”. It was embarrassing however true.

The following day, my urge for food returned, chastened however prepared. I had pork congee for breakfast, then a second breakfast of jungle curry with deer and much extra recent cardamom, an entire stewed Thai mackerel, and a few stir-fried mustard inexperienced pickles. I devoured fish, squid and an aggressively briny recent shrimp chili dip by the water for lunch. And now I’m about to lastly sort out that massaman curry with durian. And all it took was a contact of, properly, junk.

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